


It Don't Come Back

by TehChouHenshins (TehChou)



Series: The Heart Left Series [2]
Category: Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger
Genre: Evil Joe is Still Hot, Gen, More Joe Whump, The Concept of Children's Shows Eludes Me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-10
Updated: 2012-12-10
Packaged: 2017-11-20 19:48:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/589017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TehChou/pseuds/TehChouHenshins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A coda to Where the Heart Left Home, wherein Joe learns that hope, in the hands of the Zangyack, is a terrible thing to have.</p>
<p>WARNINGS: Graphic torture of a minor, death of a minor (OC) and general mind fuck, please read with discretion</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Don't Come Back

**Author's Note:**

> Once more with feeling: WARNINGS for Graphic torture of a minor, death of a minor (OC) and general mind fuck, if any of these things squick or otherwise are not your thing, you may want to give this one a miss.

"Kill them," the lieutenant says, his smirk twisted tighter than the hand tangled in his hair, yanking his head back as he aims his saber in a blunt line at the boy, huddled in the corner of the stinking, half-frozen cell.

"No," Joe says, through lips numb from being stuck in the same condition, his blood turning to slush in his veins.

A laugh, guttural and ugly. The lieutenant holds up the blinking device, the same one that's been with him for days.

"Come on, Gibken. It's a good deal, isn't it? We don't slaughter you for the traitor you are and this light goes out, nice and quick, instead of us dragging him back here and peeling his skin from his bones where you can watch."

Joe stares straight ahead, eyes locked on the boy; it helps him to remember his resolve, keeps him strong as his bones creak and his head pounds and that little red dot moves slower and slower with each passing day.

Sid can take care of himself.

"No? Alright then. You know we've got a ship, hovering all nice and cloaked right over him, right now in fact, and my boys are just waiting for the order to split him like a trout."

Despair shines from the boys eyes, a kind of strength that comes when everything is over, and there's nothing more to fight for but your pride. It doesn't sit well on someone so young.

The army's lieutenant grunts in disgust, shoving him down, devoiding him of the steady weight holding him up. With the way his hands are tied, Joe has no choice but to twist himself to soften his landing, but his bones won't cooperate and that cracked rib he has keeps pulling when he moves. He hits the ground harder for all his struggling than if he'd just let it go in the first place.

There's a clatter as the tracking indicator lands down by his head.

"Have it your way, then," the bastard says cheerfully as he slams their cell shut behind him, whistling a little tune as he leaves them to their rot.

Though his head is swimming with a new concussion, Joe doesn't close his eyes. It's the least he can do for his sempai, to watch when the little light stutters, then blinks out for good.

The boy dies three days later, despite Joe ferreting away little crumbs of his own meal, the one they watched him eat to make sure his strength was kept up, while the boy withered and died. Joe insists that he'll do what they want, whatever they want, as long as they just let the boy go, but in then end they take him away instead. When they drag him back, he screams in agony at the way they force him into his chains, broken legs bent up and twisted beneath him, the useless flesh serving no purpose now but to cause him more pain.

Joe smothers him with his palm, and the gratitude in his eyes as the light goes out burns into him, stuck in his brain like a brand, sunk stinking and burning into his flesh. He never even learned his name.

He comes out of the cell a new man, though his own legs barely have the strength to hold himself up.

There's no one left to be strong for, nothing but ghosts crowding in his head. No one to see that when they put the saber in his hands, he touches it to his head in salute, lips twisted in a ghoul's parody, sunken and twisted and lost in the new scars in his face; their win at the cost of a soul swinging heavy from the gallows in his chest.

Three years later, when he lands the position of Commander, the first thing he does is have that lieutenant --the lazy sot never daring to become more-- publicly executed, on only half-fabricated grounds of fueling desertion in his men.

Not even satisfaction trickles through him at the sight of his head hanging, dripping down the shaft of the pike shoved through his skull, though his hands curl momentarily into tightened fists. It's only the cold getting to him, again. Sid always said he had thin blood.


End file.
